Race Report by Road Captain Gareth
Sunday saw the 3rd event on the road/trail championships , the Trotters 5 miles community trail race.
There was another great turnout of 11 Lostockers took on this challenging, varied, sometimes brutal route, yet another new route for this well established and well run race.
Starting in ankle deep mud on a football field was never going to be the fastest of get away. As competitors left the football pitches behind the route headed uphill on the trails towards Smithills Hall, down some steps, up some steps and then the highlight of the race running alongside a field with 3 Emus (or where they ostriches?!) belting around and living their best lives 🤣.
Lots more uphill trails followed for the first half of the race and Greg & Andy continued to change places until Greg kicked home showing the benefit of a good cross country season and ultra training to be a very well deserved first Lostocker home 👏👏.
The 2nd half of the race is predominantly downhill but every time you built up speed and momentum the route threw another energy sapping hill at you to knock the wind out your sails (well my sails anyway 🤣).
Chris Baker continued to show his strength and clearly enjoyed himself to be 4th home for Lostock, Paul put in another strong effort on his least favourite surface and Janet showed the benefit of good pacing to finish very strongly with a big smile on her face. Not far behind was Jo, who probably enjoyed it as much as Paul 😜, and a great showing from Rachel backing up so well from yesterday’s Pendle fell race before fatigue took hold in the last few hundred yards.
Martin continues to show up well and finished strongly and Ste bagged his 3rd champs race of the year to be next home. Again though another massive shout out to Gill who finished like a steam train and showed every inch of her cross country experience overtaking half dozen runners on the muddy football pitch finish!
Really well done everyone, great effort today 👊👊.
For the record…out of 264 finishers..
68. Greg Kilshaw. 43:58
74. Andy Laycock 44:36
87. Gareth Pratt 45:36
90. Chris Baker 45:51
116. Paul Lacey 48:14
128. Janet Rhodes 49:06
135. Jo McManus 49:44
140. Rach Hancock 50:03
191. Martin Smith 56:42
197: Ste Hancock 58:10
205: Gill Caldwell 59:06
